Inga Martinow, arrived 1948

“On my very first morning in Australia, I was woken by the sound of birds singing! A whole flock was chirping, tweeting and warbling at high pitch. I stepped out into the frosty sunshine. On a low-hanging branch of a eucalyptus tree sat a solitary black and white bird – a magpie. Ever since that first day, I’ve loved eucalyptus trees and magpies!”

When the bombs dropped on Berlin during World War II, Inga sought shelter in the cellars of Berlin. Her husband, Werner, saw their son, Wito, just once. On his way back from home leave, he was killed in an air raid. The news of Werner’s death did not reach her until 1946 – a year after the war ended.The extensive damage in Germany and years of deprivation led to the decision to start a new life in Australia with her second husband, Percy Martinow. Allan, her second son, was born in the Migrant Reception Centre, Bathurst.Life was not easy – they arrived with just two suitcases, and there was a significant housing shortage. Spongy white bread and the Australian concept of “mateship” also took a while to get used to! “In terms of their personality, I always found Australians to be unique, cute even! That was refreshing.” Despite many trips back to Germany, she suffered her entire life from the tyranny of distance that comes with living in Australia.

Ernst Erdt, arrived 1951

“I saw a notice in the city in Hannover: ‘Sunny Australia is looking for labourers for a construction project in the Snowy Mountains.’ I enquired, but didn’t mention any of my injuries from the war: the gunshot wounds to my chest and knee or the two pieces of shrapnel that are still stuck inside of me. ‘You can start immediately,’ I was told.”

Ernst hardly knew his father who was killed in WWI at the Battle of Verdun. It was 32 years later that Ernst was seriously wounded at almost the same spot. His mother raised five children on her own, and then died of starvation on the long trek escaping the Russians.When he arrived in Australia, he was immediately transported to Cooma in the Snowy Mountains. “Italians, Germans, Dutchmen, Latvians, Belarusians, Yugoslavians – all nationalities were represented. Everyone was given either a shovel or a pickaxe. The work was tough and we were cut off from civilisation. Worst of all was the cold. ‘Sunny Australia’, they’d promised us, but it was so cold that sometimes even grown men cried, even those who’d served in Russia.” Conditions were extremely primitive and medical facilities were lacking. “There were countless casualties and hardly anyone missed them. What difference did it make, one dago or wog more or less?”

Ernst never returned to Pomerania. He died, aged 99, at the German Martin Luther Homes in Boronia.

Genie Fiebig, arrived 1935

“When we arrived in Australia, all I could say in English was ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Do you like brown bread and butter’? I picked up the rest fairly quickly – it’s not that hard for children.”

Genie spent her early childhood in the German community of Lodsch, in Poland. “It was 1930 when all the talk about Hitler started on the radio. My father said, ‘Things are going to get difficult, we need to get away from here’.” The family migrated to Australia but even in Melbourne, the political situation caught up with them. “In 1941, they took my father away. I was having a piano lesson at the time the police came. They had a van and quite a few men inside already.” Genie’s father was detained as an “enemy alien” in the Tatura Internment Camp. In 1951, Genie became a teacher. In the beginning, she taught classes of 65 children, sometimes from up to 14 different countries! She never stopped playing the piano and still plays the organ at the German Trinity Church on Sundays.

“I always said I wanted to marry someone who has the same background as I have, and the same traditions: preferably a German. When I met Gerhard, he was the perfect match: not only a German but a Lodsch German as well! Gerhard always said, ‘In my mind, I am here, but in my heart I’m still there’.”

Paul Anders, arrived 1941

“Do you know the difference between Australia and Germany? In Germany, you eat potatoes – with meat. In Australia, you get meat – with potatoes!”

Growing up in landlocked Silesia, Paul dreamed of the sea. In 1938, after an apprenticeship as a weaver, he travelled to Hamburg and signed on as steward’s assistant on the SS Adolf Woermann. After years of poverty and hunger, there was “plenty of food to go round”! He sailed three times on the German East Africa Line before becoming a POW.Together with Italian and Jewish refugees, Paul was sent to Australia on the MS Dunera. The trip was traumatic. The internees were treated terribly by the English guards. “A surprise awaited us when we arrived at the internment camp in Tatura: a feast of sausages, cheese, meat, fruit and vegetables. The officers stood by and watched as we ate. One even walked around with a dish yelling: Who wants more meat?” Paul got to know and love the Australian bush, and after the war, he stayed in Melbourne. “I live with two cultures and take the best parts out of each. I often think of home – somehow I feel like I’m standing with one foot in Australia and the other in Germany. But I am an Australian.”

He never returned to Silesia again. He died aged 89, just missing the 70th anniversary of the Tatura Internment Camp.

George Dreyfus, arrived 1939

“I found school boring: I plodded along and struggled on. Then I started at Melbourne High School and something changed. Melbourne High had an orchestra. One day I went into the St Kilda Town Hall and listened to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with my friend Hyme. I’m going to play in this orchestra one day, I said. And later, what I said came true.”

George grew up in a musical home. Under the persistent pressure from the Nazis, the family became more and more conscious of their Jewish heritage. “It was as if they’d tightened the screws. Eventually the Jews were isolated and the threat became a reality.”George’s father managed to have his sons transported to Australia with other Jewish children. Then, at the last minute, the parents were also granted visas.

“My father was a victim of the second wave – a Holocaust survivor who died of a broken heart. He was a germanophile.”For George, however, Berlin remains “the centre of the universe – Berlin is like nothing else in Germany”. A well-known composer nationally and internationally, George is known to many Australians for his theme music for the 1970s’ television series ‘Rush’. “I became a composer because I didn’t want to be a failure. The fact that I was ambitious helped.”George adheres to the motto: “Idleness is the start of depravity.”

Karin Koeppen, arrived 1956

“We called our restaurant ‘The Cuckoo’ because I woke up one morning, shortly after we’d moved in, and heard a cuckoo. Back then, I had no idea that Australians use the term ‘cuckoo’ to describe someone who is crazy, in the same way we Germans say: Jemand hat einen Vogel!”

Karin fled East Germany when she was only fourteen. When she disembarked in Melbourne in 1956, she only meant to stay long enough to watch the Olympic Games, but she met her future husband, Willi Koeppen. “He asked me out to dinner, to a restaurant in Acland Street. Typical for back then, we had steak and chips with a huge pile of white bread and butter. Once we’d finished eating, I buttered the bread and wrapped it in my serviette. What are you doing? Willi asked. I’m taking it with me, I said, for my breakfast tomorrow. That’s the girl I’m going to marry, Willi told a friend.”Willi was a trained chef and introduced the smorgasbord to Melbourne. “On the first Sunday after we’d opened our restaurant in the Dandenongs, we had two patrons. Only two! Doesn’t matter, Willi said. When they get home, they’ll tell their friends and eventually, more and more will come. And that’s exactly what happened. People were soon queuing up, waiting to get in. We didn’t even have a proper toilet, just a ‘dunny’, an outhouse.” Today the Cuckoo is a well-known tourist attraction in Melbourne.“I was lucky, I had a wonderful childhood and good parents. That’s what made me – good parents.”

Fred Glasbrenner, arrived 1956

“Three friends left home to take on the world. Not to conquer it with violence and weapons, but with friendship and mutual understanding. They wanted to meet new people, exchange ideas, learn how others lived and teach others how they lived. And that’s what they did.”

In 1939, his parents took Fred to Germany to meet the family. They were surprised by the sudden outbreak of WWII and forced to stay in Germany. “I built my first bicycle out of scrap metal and became obsessed with cycling.” On 20 December 1955, Fred Glasbrenner, aged 19, and two of his friends started out on the adventure of a lifetime. In Backnang, an outer suburb of Stuttgart, they mounted their bikes and pedalled their way to Australia – to the 16th Olympic Games, held in Melbourne in 1956. They travelled through many countries, and met influential statesmen of the time, like King Faisal II of Iraq in Baghdad, the Shah of Iran and his wife Soraya, Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Iskandar Mirza, President of Pakistan. When they finally reached Darwin, they still had 4,500km ahead of them and only six weeks left to make it to Melbourne on time. They did it: “On 10 October 1956 we appeared on the front page of The Argus.” Fred stayed in Australia. “I am an Australian. Well, not on paper but who needs a piece of paper to tell them where they feel at home? Apart from that, I call myself a Swabian - from the Swabian region of Germany. Swabians are not Germans, they’re Swabians!”

Pastor Ewald Steiniger, arrived 1935

“Each individual property in Thomastown was bathed in sunshine – a portrait of peace. Schäfers Sonntagslied: The Shepherd’s Sabbath Song. From church elder Siebel’s property, we travelled through meadow and over brook, up to the small hill where the church lies. Impressive, the dark cypresses next to the church. The English sermon I found a little difficult but I got through it.”

Ewald Steiniger was a contemporary of Pastors Niemöller and Bonhoeffer, and together they spoke out openly against the Nazi Party’s ‘Aryan paragraph’. His anti-Nazi standpoint did not endear him to the regime, and when the German Trinity Church in Melbourne needed a new pastor, Ewald Steiniger accepted. For the next 29 years, until his sudden death on 16 April 1964, the Steiniger family lived in the parsonage at 22 Parliament Place. “The house was always full – the congregation was part of our family.” Life was difficult in the years leading up to 1945. Pastor Steiniger was labelled an “enemy alien” and interned at Tatura. Still, he and his wife Annemarie continued to care for those who needed their help. Sending CARE Packages to Germany, organising community nights, a welfare society and a women’s group, and supporting the Hospital Sunday Appeal. Pastor Steiniger was buried in Thomastown, in the cemetery he’d been so impressed by on his first visit there. The Trinity Church at 22 Parliament Place is still an active German speaking community.

Hermann Ralph Uhlherr, arrived 1949

“I changed my name during my first week in Australia. In 1949, I didn’t want to be known at school as Herman the German so I adopted my middle name, Ralph, instead. I associate the name Hermann with my life in the Temple Society in Palestine and WWII Germany, the name Ralph belongs to Australia.”

Ralph grew up in the Temple Society, an independent religious community that was founded in Württemberg in 1861. As early as 1868, Templers moved to Palestine because they weren’t able to practise their faith freely in Germany. They retained their German citizenship because Palestine was a British Mandate territory. “When the Nazis founded the Third Reich, we became Citizens of the German Reich.” For the older Templers, the connection to Germany goes much deeper than the nationality shown on their passports. Many appreciate the rich cultural heritage that their ancestors brought with them from Germany and some still speak Schwäbisch, the Swabian dialect.” In 1939, Ralph’s father was sent to Australia, together with many other men, and interned at Tatura. Ralph, his mother and brother were sent to Germany. In 1949, they boarded a DC-3 Dakota in Rome for a 16-day flight to Sydney. The plane had to land each night and frequently broke down.

“I feel like an Australian. I was naturalised in 1951, so I am an Australian citizen. I had to sit a test and take an oath before a magistrate. But that was fine by me. In Germany, we were always the Auslandsdeutschen (Foreign Germans), in Palestine ‘the Templers’, and no one wanted us.”

Sabine Nielsen, arrived 1972

“On the weekends, I often bake a cake. Then I set the table. Properly, with a full coffee set, cake forks and serviettes – just like at home. This is how I maintain a connection with my German roots: having coffee with the family on Sundays. Except now it’s just the two of us and our home is in Melbourne, Australia.”

When Sabine was 20 years’ of age, she met a young Australian on a working holiday in Europe. They fell in love and: “Suddenly, he wanted to take me with him. To Australia! A country I knew very little about, only what I’d learnt in geography at school. I didn’t even think about what type of people lived in Australia or what it looked like there. All I knew was this was my chance to get myself out of a rut. Besides, like so many young women, I thought marriage meant the start of the happy end.”

She had no idea there’d be such a difference between her German culture and the Anglo-Saxon culture of Australia. “Both are Western, democratic, capitalist countries, largely Christian, and with European origins. And yet we often still seem to be miles apart. In Australia, I was confronted with my German identity for the first time. Due to the isolation of this country, certain cultural stereotypes just take a long time to die out.” She still thinks it was the correct decision to come here. “I had to learn rules that were familiar to everyone else, but I was able to live a much freer life here. And yet it wasn’t until I was here, in a foreign country, that I realised what being German means to me.”